Technology of a steam turbine has remarkably developed aiming at the bigger capacity and the higher efficiency. The technology thereof is also applied to improvement/maintenance of the steam turbine, to enhance reliability, performance, and efficiency of the existing steam turbine.
In order to improve/maintain power generation equipment such as steam turbine, reverse engineering (acquiring information such as a shape of existing equipment and designing/manufacturing a component or an instrument based thereon) is commonly used. Some of technologies for acquiring information such as shapes of existing equipment are published.
As described above, in improving/maintaining the steam turbine, a component or an instrument is sometimes designed/produced based on inspected/measured data of the existing steam turbine so that the component or the instrument to which up-to-date technology is applied can comply with the existing steam turbine.
However, in order to inspect/measure the existing steam turbine, it is necessary to open casing(s) of the steam turbine and to halt operation of the steam turbine for a long period of time.